The debate over whether to ban the growing of medical marijuana within 600 feet of local schools has sparked legal action involving two members of a county advisory board.

The Marin County Alcohol and Drug Advisory Board voted 7-0 in November, with three members absent, to urge the Marin County Board of Supervisors invoke a new state law to adopt 600-foot buffers. But when the advisory board met in December, two of its members — Joseph Henderson, who missed the November meeting, and Pamela Lichtenwalner, who originally had joined the vote to invoke the law — asked their fellow members to revisit the issue. The board voted 5-2 against doing so, with three members missing the vote.

The board's action was prompted by an early morning theft of marijuana from a home next door to Venetia Valley Elementary School in Santa Venetia, during which fleeing thieves left a trail of pot buds across the school yard that school officials had to clean up before the start of school.

Advisory board member Mark Dale says it was soon after the board's December vote, during which he clashed with Lichtenwalner, that Lichtenwalner began the harassment that caused him to request a restraining order against her.

On Feb. 5, Marin County Superior Court Judge Mark Talamantes approved Dale's request prohibiting Lichtenwalner from coming within 100 feet of Dale or his family, or phoning or calling them, for the next year. Judge Talamantes provided two exceptions: Lichtenwalner may continue to interact with Dale during advisory board meetings and may send Dale emails if copies of the email are also sent to other advisory board members.

Dale, who lives in Terra Linda, founded Families for Safer Schools in 2010 following two teen suicides in Marin and a crisis with one of his own sons, who has struggled with substance abuse. Lichtenwalner, a special education teacher who lives in Stinson Beach, declined to comment for this story.

Dale said, "I wish her no will. I just don't understand what drives her in this. It has zero to do with medical marijuana and everything to do with school safety."

Greg Knell, a member of the San Rafael Board of Education, said he would like to see county supervisors follow the drug board's recommendation to implement Assembly Bill 1300, which became law in 2011, to ban the growing of medical marijuana within 600 feet of schools throughout Marin. Knell said there are currently a number of locations throughout the county where medical marijuana is being grown close by local schools.

"This is not the only one," Knell said. "We have one behind San Rafael High. There are plenty in the county within the 600-foot boundary of schools."

Knell had briefed the advisory board on the Venetia Valley incident.

Knell said about 18 months ago, early in the morning, thieves climbed over a fence separating the home from the school and were in the process of stealing some of the marijuana plants, which were in the back yard, when the inhabitants interrupted them. Knell said the thieves fled back over the fence and, in their haste to escape, dropped some of the stolen marijuana buds on the school yard.

"The principal and the assistant principal were out there picking up marijuana and stuffing it in their blouses before the parents got there," Knell said. "You can imagine if we had a five-year-old chomp down on a sinsemilla bud with the power it has today. We'd have lawsuits, a hospitalized child. We take this very seriously."

Knell said that following the break-in, the owners of the house put fishhooks in the fence to deter future burglars. Knell said the hooks were removed after school officials complained that the barbs endangered children at the school.

Marin County Sheriff Robert Doyle said he has spoken with the people who live in the house. He also confirmed Knell's account of the aborted robbery.

"We verified that all of them had medical marijuana cards," Doyle said, of the residents. "It was lawful for them to grow the marijuana, much to the chagrin of the school board and the school."

Doyle said he is unaware of any other properties in Marin where medical marijuana is being grown within 600 feet of a school.

Martha Smythe, the owner of the house, said her son began growing marijuana at their home at his doctor's recommendation; but she said all the plants were removed long ago.

Smythe said her son used the medical marijuana only while he was recovering.

"He almost died from a severe staph infection in his lungs," Smythe said. "He had a terrible time recovering."

Henderson, who is paid to do public relations by Marin Holistic Solutions, a medical marijuana dispensary in Corte Madera, said, he opposed the advisory board's decision to apply the 600-foot ban because "this was brought up specifically so the board could target a single house and a single family."

"What we're doing as a board," Henderson said, "is try to tell somebody they can't use their own personal house, their own personal property, to address their own personal health."

Under Proposition 215, which legalized the use of medical marijuana plants in California, patients whose doctors have recommended they use marijuana, may cultivate as many as six mature or 12 immature marijuana plants. The law may also allow individuals who belong to a collective to grow more plants than that for individuals who are too sick to tend the plants themselves.

Dale says that soon after the advisory board's Dec. 3 meeting Lichtenwalner sent him several emails objecting to the board's decision and questioning his mental health. Dale provided copies of the emails in his request for the restraining order.

Court records indicate that on Dec. 11, Lichtenwalner sent an email to Dale in which she wrote, "I think very strongly that the Alcohol and Drug Advisory Board should not be involved in any promotion of citizen attempts to get AB 1300 in alignment with the Marin County Sheriff's Office's laws, rules and regulations."

In an email on Dec. 12, Lichtenwalner wrote to Dale: "It is time, I think, that you get serious help for what seems to be PTSD. This black-n-white thinking is one of the symptoms of PTSD but I have seen many symptoms in my years and friendship with you."

In second email to Dale that same day, Lichtenwalner wrote, "Please do consider seeing a trained, licensed and competent psychiatrist for the challenges that I have dialogued about with you but that you disagree with."

Then on Jan. 11, 2013, Lichtenwalner called the Marin County Sheriff's Office and told officers there they should check on Dale because due to his state of mind he might be a danger to himself. Sheriff's deputies notified the San Rafael Police Department, since Dale lives in San Rafael, and San Rafael officers contacted his family to determine if there was problem — which there wasn't.

And finally, Dale told Judge Talamantes that when one of his sons had to appear in court for a minor traffic offense on Jan. 23, Lichtenwalner attended the hearing.

Dale said, "There was no good reason for her to be in that courtroom, period."

Dale said even before the December vote by the advisory board, Lichtenwalner had been leaving him phone messages, which he considered coercive. Dale said Lichtenwalner stated in the messages that politics in Marin is a "blood sport" and warning him about drug dealers in West Marin.

Dale said the calls began after he began conducting informative programs for parents on the risks of marijuana use for teens.

Lichtenwalner was censured by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing for misconduct in December, 2007.